The Hireling Shepherd The Hireling Shepherd William Holman Hunt on Poetry F. G. Stephens's Praise of Hunt's Color Stephens praises the painting as one which "embodied a genuine thought, in glowing and intense colours, victorious rendering of nature in every detail, solid and manly execution unflinchingly carried out, with the representation of sunlight effect, which was an entirely new thing in art. For the painter first put into practice, in an historical picture, based upon his own observations, the scientific elucidation of that peculiar effect which, having been hinted at by Leonardo da Vinci . . . was partly explained by Newton, and fully developed by Davy and Brewster. He was absolutely the first figure-painter who gave the true colour to sun-shadows, made them partake of the tint of the object on which they were cast, and deepened such shadows to pure blue where he found them to be so, painted trees like trees, and far-off hedgerows standing clearly in pure summer air" (William Holman Hunt and His Works, A Memoir of the Artist's Life, with a Description of His Pictures (London, 1860), pp.19-20).

See also Allen Staley, The Pre-Raphaelite Landscape (Oxford, 1973), 24, and Macmillan, 194-95. Hunt's first Hogarthian subject was The Hireling Shepherd, which several wscholars have recently demonstrated to be a work of art with a complex symbolical program that draws upon a number of literary and artristic sources. In a well-known letter to J. E. Pythian, the artist himself explianed that although his first intention was to present a realistic shepherd and shepherdess, he also had 'an occult suggestion in mind oif a simple character'. When he exhibited the painting at the Royal Academy, he included these lines from King Lear as an epigraph: Sleepeth or waketh thou, jolly shepherd? Thy sheep be in the corn; And for one blast of thy minikin mouth, Thy sheep shall take no harm.

[Act III, scene 6] The letter to Pythian explains that Shakespeare's song represents a Shepherd who is neglecting his real duty of guarding the sheep: instead of using his voice in truthfully performing his duty, he is using his "minikin mouth" in some idle way. He was a type thus of other muddle headed pastors who instead of performing their services to their flock — which is in constant peril — discuss vain questions of no value to any human soul. My fool has found a death's head moth, and this fills his little mind with forebodings of evil and he takes it to an equally sage counsellor for her opinion. She scorns his anxiety from ignorance rather than profundity, but only the more distracts his faithfulness: while she feeds her lamb with sour apples his sheep have burst bounds and got into the corn.

It is not merely that the wheat will be spoilt, but in eating it the sheep are doomed to destruction from becoming what farmers call "blown." [21 January 1897; London (Manchester City Art Gallery MS.)] Pointing out that Hunt's Shakespearean gloss provides only a partial source for his complex intentions in this picture, John Duncan Macmillan has convincingly argued that the painter drew upon St. John's Gospel and Milton's "Lycidas" as well. According to Macmillan, Hunt took the idea of the hireling shepherd as false pastor from John 10:11-14 and the more detailed working out of his satire on unfaithful ministers from the elegy for Edward King ("Holman Hunt's Hireling Shepherd: Some Reflections on a Victorian Pastoral," Art Bulletin 54 [1972], 190-91.). He also explains the presence of the dallying shepherdess as an allusion to Milton's Amaryllis, who naughtily sports in the shade, and to the engraving of a work by Boucher (Macmillan, 191).

Hunt's Amaryllis, which was exhibited at the Grosvenor Gallery in 1887, might well echo The Hireling Shepherd. In this later painting, of which I have only seen the reproduction which Hunt included in his memoir (facing II.62), sheep again seem to be escaping from their pen, while an abstracted-looking shepherdess plays on her pipes. Leslie Parris and Conal Shields offer the further suggestion that Hunt drew directly upon Ruskin to create an image of the breakdown of the established church, perhaps even of religion itself. In Notes on the Construction of Sheepfolds (1851), which Hunt read while working on The Hireling Shepherd, Ruskin emphatically asserted "That the schism between the so-called Evangelical and High Church Parties in Britain, is enough to shake many men's faith in the truth or existence of Religion at all . . . If the Church of England does not forthwith unite with herself the entire Evangelical body, both of England and Scotland, and take her stand with them against the Papacy, her hour has struck." (Leslie Parris, Landscape in Britain, c.

1750-1850 [London, 1973], 128, who credits Conal Shields with suggesting this line of reasoning (138n), does not cite any evidence for the assertion that Hunt knew Ruskin's tract.) Pius IX's decision to re-establish the Roman Catholic hierarchy in England in 1850 prompted many Protestants to fear for the English Church. Such an emphasis, one may add, provides but a small part of Ruskin's argument in this tract, and Hunt may have been even more influenced by his general moral tone, his imagery of sheep and shepherds, and his assertion that all Christians are priests. Ruskin argues that "the whole function of Priesthood was, on Christmas morning, at once and for ever gathered into His Person who was born at Bethlehem; and thenceforward, all who are united with Him, and who with Him make sacrifice of themselves . . . become at the instant of their conversion, Priests" (Works, 12.537). Such a belief well agrees with Hunt's own later religious faith, and it also provides another support for the artist's conception of himself as priest (I.xv).

Equally important, such a conception of the universal priesthood of believers gives The Hireling Shepherd a wider application, for it makes it apply not only to the clergyman who does not fulfil his duties but to all Christians who are lax in performing theirs. Drawing upon the work of these scholars, we can observe what an astonishingly complex work The Hireling Shepherd turns out to be. First of all, it is the embodiment of Hunt's program for an imaginative visual realism, for as his friend Stephens pointed out, it was the first picture by a figure-painter to give the true color of sunlight shadows [See note at left]. Secondly, by representing its shepherd and shepherdess as inhabitants of the English countryside, Hunt's painting implicitly criticizes what he termed the "dresden china bergers" of conventional pastoral pictures (Letter to J. E. Pythian, 21 January 1897; Manchester City Art Gallery MS).

Thirdly, it provides an emblematic image of all men who shirk their duties and thus fail to prepare for "the night that cometh." Fourthly, this Victorian pastoral, as Macmillan calls it, attacks those negligent clergy who dally with earthly pleasures, permitting their parishioners to perish spiritually; and if one accepts the suggestion that Hunt here drew upon Ruskin, this picture specifically attacks those churchmen who spent so much time and effort on sectarian conflict that they left England vulnerable to Roman Catholicism. Fifthly, it employs the Miltonic (and Ruskinian) identification of artist with priest to satirize painters and poets who neglect their true function with sad effects upon themselves and their audience. Thus, like The Light of the World and The Finding of the Saviour in the Temple, Hunt's The Hireling Shepherd contains an implicit statement about the nature of the artist and his responsibility to fight the conventional, the blind, and the wicked. The specifically Hogarthian elements in this picture are its various emblematic details, some of which Hunt himself explained in his letter to Pythian.

Thus, the unprotected sheep who will die from eating grain and the lamb fed sour apples symbolize the effects of such pastoral neglect, while the death's-head moth, which provides a timely symbol of human mortality, offers a further means of judging the severity of such failure to do one's duty. Macmillan suggests that the details in the picture can be seen to elaborate the theme of temptation and spiritual neglect. The apples in the foreground are too prominent to be meaningless. In the circumstances they cannot help recalling the Temptation and Fall. They are also a symbol of neglect, for green apples are poisonous to lambs. If the apples allude to the Fall, then the lamb is the Lamb of Redemption. It is her own redemption that the girl neglects. The lamb itself is a sickly late-born creature, too small for late summer, and covered with a cloth in spite of the heat . . . The whole field is swampy. Marshy ground is bad for sheep, causing sheep-rot, the "foul contagion" in Lycidas . . . A marsh is a suitably Bunyan-esque image.

[Macmillan, 191-92] Although one must agree with Macmillan about the marshy ground, his interpretation of the painting in terms of symbols of the Fall and Redemption presents certain difficulties, not the least of which is that, so interpreted, the details do not work as coherently as they generally do in Hunt's work. For example, it is unlikely that a painter who emphasized that symbolic meanings should grow naturally from realistic detail would make a sickly lamb the symbol of Christ. Similarly, although one can work out a scheme by which it makes sense for this daughter of Eve to give an apple to the Lamb of God, this does not function very coherently either. Macmillan assumes that the individual details work all but independently of each other, and this is of course possible. Even in Hunt's early Druids picture, however, he had already developed a coherent, integrated symbolism in which each element played an appropriate role in an overall scheme, and it therefore seems unlikely that he would have departed from this method here. One must conclude, then, either that Hunt chose a less integrated form of symbolism than he employed in earlier and later work, or that he made less use of detailed symbolism than Macmillan suggests.

Holman Hunt's Story Paintings Fill Manchester Art Gallery | Culture24 Holman Hunt's Story Paintings Fill Manchester Art Gallery By Dawn Marshallsay | 14 October 2008 Tags: Archived article The Awakening Conscience, 1853. © Tate, London 2008 Review - Dawn Marshallsay visits Manchester Art Gallery and discovers how there's a lot going on in the paintings of master Pre-Raphaelite, Holman Hunt in an exhibition that runs until January 11 2009. One girl drapes her hair over a pot of basil, a second perches on a man’s lap in front of a piano, while a third lounges in a field of sheep. These scenes may seem unexceptional until you spot the name tag: Holman Hunt. Every intricate object painted by the one true Pre-Raphaelite plays a vital role in a tale of love, sin and redemption.

Isabella and the Pot of Basil (1867), The Awakening Conscience (1853) and The Hireling Shepherd (1851) are among 30 works on display in Manchester Art Gallery’s Holman Hunt and the Pre-Raphaelite Vision exhibition, which has been organised by the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto and runs until January 11 2009. This is the first exhibition in over 40 years to focus on Hunt, and the first ever opportunity to see all three versions of Hunt’s The Light of the World together – Hunt’s 1900-04 version became the most viewed painting in the world, after touring in front of 7 million people across the globe. The Hireling Shepherd, 1851. © Manchester City Galleries Each painting tells a story, and part of the fun is trying to decipher the symbolism yourself before looking at the label. While targeted at 19th-century Bible-reading audiences, the paintings also play on the works of Shakespeare, Keats and Tennyson.

Isabella, from Keats’ poem of the same name (also known as The Pot of Basil), is actually caressing the pot in which the head of her murdered lover is buried; the mistress in The Awakening Conscience has literally seen the light and seeks to repent after sleeping with a married man; and the third girl has distracted a shepherd (symbolising the Catholic church) from tending to his sheep, letting them fall ill from eating apples and corn. But even if you are familiar with Bible stories and classic literature, “Hunt liked to reinterpret other people’s work and create his own narratives, often mixing stories together,” says Dr Carole Silver, author of Visions and Revisions in the book of essays accompanying the exhibition, Holman Hunt and the Pre-Raphaelite Vision (complied by Katherine Lochnan and Carol Jacobi, 2008). The Light of the World, St Paul's Cathedral version, 1900-04. © Christie's 2008, reproduced with permission of the Dean & Chapter of St Paul's Cathedral Hunt took tragic circumstances and relationships and infused them with hope, symbolising the forgiveness promised by Christ.

Though strong religious symbolism was a main theme of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, it was not until painting his first version The Light of the World (1851-56) that Hunt converted to Christianity, after having a revelation of Christ. In this painting, Hunt’s depiction of Christ knocking on a door covered with brambles symbolises Christ knocking to enter a sinner’s soul: “Behold, I stand at the door and knock,” (Revelation 3:20), while the lantern he holds symbolises Christ being the “light of the world” (John 9:5), providing hope in the darkness. The Triumph of the Innocents, 1883-5. © Tate, London 2008 Merging two concepts again, The Triumph of the Innocents (1883-85) puts hope into the Biblical tale of Herod slaughtering baby Jewish boys, by depicting Jesus’ family fleeing Egypt and witnessing the resurrection of these babies. “This painting strongly reflects Hunt’s own hopes and fears,” says Carol Jacobi, co-curator of the exhibition. “He was plagued with doubts about Christianity and wondered if his first wife Fanny could really be resurrected in Heaven.

One of the cherubs is inspecting his healed wound in disbelief.” “At the same time, he was anxious about the safety of his second wife and child, who modelled for the painting. This is a rare scene of a happy family, but it failed to make Hunt happy – he thought he would die painting it, and it took 12 years to complete.” Hunt’s devotion to capturing the truth drove him to paint this scene by moonlight during his trips to the Holy Land. He even tried to recreate the effect of moonlight by inspecting it through a magnifying glass. The Scapegoat, 1854-55. © Manchester City Galleries This seems mild compared to having to paint with a brush in one hand and a shotgun in the other. Hunt painted The Scapegoat (1854-55) in the most southerly part of the Dead Sea, where savage Bedouin Tribes roamed. As with many of his paintings, this was a spiritual journey for Hunt.

He felt that working in such an inhospitable place would expiate his sins, sympathising with the goat from ancient Jewish texts that was cast out into the desert to die, taking with it all of the Israelites' sins. “He believed that the scapegoat, as a symbol of forgiveness of sins, was the similarity between Christianity and Judaism, and that it would help them reconcile in Jerusalem,” says Katherine Locnan, from the Art Gallery of Ontario. Hunt’s passion for creating one true religion caused him to spend six-and-a-half years in the Holy Land (Palestine), in three stages between 1854 and 1878, painting and witnessing archaeologists’ attempts to prove the credibility of the Bible’s stories. The Shadow of Death, 1870-73. © Manchester City Galleries Hunt’s preference for private religion between God and the worshipper is reflected in The Shadow of Death (1870-73), which depicts Jesus as a working carpenter. Disregarding Catholic icon worship, Hunt controversially painted the Virgin Mary’s back, and adorned her with jewellery and muscles.

Drawing on part of the Bible not used today, this painting shows Mary to be staring at a shadow that predicts Jesus’ crucifixion. Up until this point she had thought Jesus would be a king of earthly wealth, rather than spiritual. Though this painting took four years to produce, rather than 12, “Hunt repainted Christ’s face daily almost, trying to create an effect that was impossible to get,” says Locnan. The Pre-Raphaelite motto of staying true to nature extended beyond Hunt’s botanical subjects – everything had to be perfect. Isabella and the Pot of Basil, 1867. © Tyne & Wear Museums As the only Pre-Raphaelite Brother to devote his entire life to minute, stippled brushwork, Hunt’s paintings come to life the closer you get. His attraction to the intricate designs on women’s dresses ran in the family, as his father and grandfather both owned fabric warehouses. Like the Impressionists, Hunt created strong contrasts between light and dark, which is how he captured the numerous shades of white on Isabella’s nightdress.

Applying this technique to the flesh gave every crease and bulge more prominence, explaining why Mary in The Shadow of Death and the cherubs in The Triumph of the Innocents appear so muscular. Lantern designed by William Holman Hunt. © Manchester City Galleries Every object had to be painted from real life, which is why Hunt designed, and had made, the lantern that Jesus holds in The Light of the World. This lantern is on display in the exhibition, along with Hunt’s palette, brushes and spectacles, and maps and notebooks from his travels. “This exhibition reveals a new Hunt,” says Locnan. The painter seemed to select the most complicated scenes and designs that would keep him occupied for years, giving him more time to think about his faith. Was Hunt's obsession with The Light of the World a plea for others to hear Christ's knocking, or a reminder to himself to keep opening the door?

All tags William Holman Hunt Paintings | Oil Paintings Gallery Oil Paintings by William Holman Hunt, England 1827 to 1910 Filter list according to painting color palette: William Hunt was one of the most influential and respected artists in Boston during the late 19th century,ans was a leading proponent of the French Barbizon School of painting, the precursor of Impressionism. He was a landscape, genre, and portrait painter, a highly respected teacher, and widely read writer.His engaging personality combined with his talents to make him the leading arbiter of aesthetics in New England where he was one of the first artists to inject French influence Can't find the painting you are looking for?

click here On English Coasts The Scapegoat The Scapegoat "Le Bouc Émissaire face aux canons" by Bï¿½atrice Laurent (in French) The Scapegoat, which Hunt began to paint when he was unable to get Jewish models to sit for him in Jerusalem, is iconographically a far simpler picture than The Finding of the Saviour in the Temple: Hunt employs but a single image, that of the scapegoat which prefigures Christ's sufferings and redemptive death. This greater iconographical simplicity, which I believe is partly responsible for the work's failure, makes it an uncharacteristic example of Hunt's typological paintings; therefore I think that Herbert Sussman is essentially incorrect when he takes it as representative of the artist's productions ("Hunt, Ruskin, and 'The Scapegoat,'" Victorian Studies, 12 (1969), 83-90.). To be sure, in the manner of both The Finding and his earlier symbolic pictures, Hunt employed scriptural texts inscribed upon the frame to guide the spectator.

First, he quotes from Isaiah 53:4 those lines conventionally taken as clear prophecies directly referring to Christ: "Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted." Writing about the entire chapter from which this passage is taken, Bishop Lowth (whose translation of Isaiah Hunt had used for the frame of The Awakening Conscience ) insisted that it "declares the circumstances of our Saviour's sufferings so exactly, that it seems rather a history of his passion, than a prophecy. And it is so undeniable a proof of the truth of Christianity, that the bare reading of it, and comparing it with the gospel-history, hath converted some infidels" (Quoted by Thomas Scott as part of his commentary to Isaiah 53, Commentary, III, 267). Scott had explained the lines Hunt was to append to this painting: The prophet, in the name of all believers, in every age and nation here breaks forth in admiration of the love of Christ, and the mystery of his vicarious sufferings.

As every kind of misery springs from sin; so when Christ endured hardship in alleviating these miseries, by healing men's diseases, it might properly be considered a fulfillment of this prophecy, and a part of his general design . . . He endured our griefs and sorrows, becoming a sufferer to redeem us from eternal sufferings; and this, which should for ever endear him to mankind, caused the Jews to mistake his character, and to suppose that he was smitten of God, because he was a most atrocious sinner; as Job's friends construed his calamities into a proof of his undetected guilt. [Scott, Commentary, III, 268] Scott's procedure in this passage, of which I have only quoted a small portion, consists in juxtaposing the apparently clear prophecies in Isaiah with other texts drawn from Old and New Testament, thus creating the impression that he has discovered an elaborate web of divine meaning which underlies all human history By pairing these lines from Isaiah with the mention of the scapegoat in Leviticus 16:22, Hunt similarly tries to generate in the spectator a sense of the wonderful complexity with which God revealed his plan for man's salvation through Judaic history and ritual.

although the text from Isaiah bears directly upon Christ, that from Leviticus instead presents a type of him: "And the Goat shall bear upon him all their iniquities unto a Land not inhabited." Juxtaposing these two texts upon his frame not only sets the audience, like that of a preacher, within the proper context to appreciate the significance of the scapegoat, but also follows the procedure adopted in The Finding of bringing together types and prophecies. As usual when Hunt employs a type, he devotes considerable attention to making the spectator realize the importance of its literal significance. He therefore included a long paragraph in the Royal Academy catalogue explaining the meaning of the scapegoat to ancient Judaism. After pointing out that he had painted the picture "at Osdoom, on the margin of the salt-encrusted shallows of the Dead Sea," he explained that two goats were chosen as part of the old levitical ritual for the Day of Atonement.

One was offered to God as a propitiation for men's sins, and while it was being sacrificed as a burnt offering, the congregation present manifested their impatience by calling upon the priest to hasten the departure of the scapegoat, and afterwards by following the beast as he was led away by the man appointed, to a cliff about ten miles from Jerusalem; tormenting it by the way, and shouting, "Hasten, carry away our sins." The red fillet which he depicted bound about the animal's horns was placed there, he adds, because of the belief that if God accepted the propitiation "the scarlet would become white (in accordance with the promise in Isaiah: "Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be white as snow: though they be red as crimson, they shall be as wool") (Quoted in Bennett, William Holman Hunt [Liverpool, 1969], 42). This description of the ritual expiation makes quite clear the elaborate parallels between the prophecy in Isaiah and the levitical type - just as it also makes clear the way this ritual tormenting of the goat prefigures the Passion.

Hunt cites talmudic sources in support of his description, but in fact standard biblical commentaries provide much the same information. For instance, Thomas Scott explains in great detail the nature and original significance of this rite, adding an elaborate typological reading of it: Christ "bare our sins in his own body on the tree"; they were imputed to him, and he bare the punishment due to them: this was typified by the goat which was slain and burnt. He then ascended into heaven, and by his intercession grounded on his atonement, renders our persons and services accepted: this was typified by the high priest entering with the blood and incense into the most holy place. In consequence of this, the sins of all believers are entirely forgiven; and they are dealt with, as if they had never committed them: this was shadowed by the scape-goat sent away into the wilderness. (Commentary on Leviticus 16:20-2, Scott, I, 365.

See also, I, 362-9 for Scott's detailed comments on the scapegoat's prefigurative relation to Christ; and Fairbairn, The Typology of Scripture, II, 312, 541.) The entire ritual of expiation provided an elaborate material prefiguration of Christ's career and purpose, and the Christian was supposed to meditate upon it, both to perceive God's presence in history and to experience the sufferings of Christ. For a twentieth-century audience it is necessary to emphasize that to the Victorian worshipper there was nothing in the slightest eccentric about such detailed readings of Leviticus. In fact, this book of the Bible, the source of the so-called legal types, provides a particularly important test case for the entire method of reading the scriptures for types and shadows of Christ; and it was therefore a very popular subject for Evangelical sermons and tracts. Since nineteenth-century believers in the literal truth of the Bible thought that all portions of the scriptures were equally valuable, equally relevant, to the worshipper, they had frequent recourse to typological readings, which furnish a powerful demonstration of the essential unity of Old and New Testaments.

The sections in Leviticus giving directions for rituals in a long-destroyed Temple confronted the reader with difficulties: what did these abrogated laws of an alien religion have to say to him? Once he realized that God had instituted the practice of animal sacrifice as a means of showing that man cannot live up to the moral law and hence needs some form of expiation, then it became clear that all these rites are anticipations of Christ which God has recorded to allow the modern believer to feel the order and necessity of the Divine Plan. Perhaps because the application of types to Leviticus produced such dramatic results, it remained a great favorite with the writers. The very fact that one could arrive at such unexpected truths was itself a major argument in favor of the validity of this mode of Bible reading. As Fairbairn stated this common argument, "a proper understanding of the Typology of Scripture" not only "imparts an air of grandeur to its smallest incidents, and makes the little relatively great," it also "warrants us to proceed a step further," recognizing that apparently unimportant details and incidents of the Bible are central to its meaning and method.

"It was precisely the limited and homely character of many of the things related which rendered them such natural and easy stepping-stones to the discoveries of a higher dispensation" (The Typology of Scripture, I, 218). Here, then, is one of the major justifications of Hunt's choice of such an apparently unimportant, even bizarrely humble subject for a supposedly important religious picture: this mere animal, this goat, is intended to serve as a meditative image from which we can derive all the wonders of Christ's sacrifice for man. It not only provides us with a powerful physical image of suffering, which we are to understand as referring to the far greater sufferings of Christ, but it also places the image of this animal in its proper spiritual context, enabling us to observe how wonderfully God structured sacred history to inform man of coming salvation. This picture of a suffering goat was intended to furnish the occasion for a profoundly moving meditation on the life of Christ, and on the nature of sin and suffering and God's entire gospel scheme as well. Unfortunately, however effectively such a program might work within Victorian sermons and poems, it does not do so in The Scapegoat.

For one thing it is a very realistic painting, and Hunt's image of a suffering goat is far too obtrusive: it commands our attention too much, distracting us from precisely those spiritual ideas it was supposed to convey. Part of the distraction arises in Hunt's realistic technique which renders so well every detail of the animal's wool, for this detailed portrayal of visual fact really has no iconographic significance and hence dilutes the picture's intended meaning. Rudolf Arnheim has shown how realism increasingly introduces the accidental, the disorderly, and the insignificant ("Accident and the Necessity of Art," Toward a Psychology of Art (Berkeley, 1972), 166-69 and Art and Visual Perception (London, 1967), 114-20.); and this is precisely what has happened in the realistic image of this dying goat: whereas Hunt had been able to combine naturalism with an elaborate iconography in The Finding, here the details escape his control, assuming a life and meaning of their own - or rather a life and absence of meaning of their own. Furthermore, Hunt has given the animal an almost human expression, which strikes one as ludicrously sentimental rather than deeply moving.

A third difficulty arises from Hunt's unfortunate placement of the animal so close to the picture plane. Ruskin, who was sympathetic to the painter's intentions if not his result, pointed out in his Academy Notes that he had "hardly ever seen a composition left apparently almost to chance, come so unluckily; the insertion of the animal in the exact centre of the canvas making it look as if it were painted for a sign" (Works, 14.66). Ruskin is incorrect in asserting that The Scapegoat's composition is a matter of accident, because Hunt purposefully thrust the goat upon the spectator to make him realize its sufferings - and to prevent him from mistaking the picture for a mere oriental version of a straying animal. However much one might feel that this painting would have been vastly more successful if Hunt had placed the goat farther back in the picture space, he did not do so because his conception of his subject required him to confront us directly and forcefully. Unfortunately, the results of this confrontation are disastrous. The painting not only is a formal and aesthetic failure, but it has iconographic problems as well.

I do not mean that the artist's choice of the image of the scapegoat as a type of Christ was either mistaken or eccentric, since he chose a commonplace scriptural image and gave it a standard interpretation. I long believed that when the painter encountered complete incomprehension on the part of many critics, his problem was only that he had the wrong audience: the Evangelicals, who would immediately have understood his work, were in general unlikely to pay much attention to painting, while the art world had few who knew much about Evangelical readings of scripture. Such an explanation contains part of the truth, to be sure, yet one must not overemphasize the amount of hostility or lack of understanding that greeted The Scapegoat. According to Hunt's own descriptions of the critical reception of his picture in Pre-Raphaelitism and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, one would assume that no one had either understood it or had a favorable word to say about it, but Hunt was trying to demonstrate what a difficult time he had had in the early years of the Brotherhood, and he included only hostile reviews. Hunt's version of the critical climate has misled some recent students of Pre-Raphaelitism.

Sussman, for example, only draws upon those reviews quoted by Hunt, thus producing a false impression of the work's reception. Ruskin's discussion of the painting, which shows it needed to be defended from The Times, does suggest that those from an Evangelical background understood the meaning of the picture; and Ruskin was not the only member of the Pre-Raphaelite circle to do so. In 1856 when Rossetti was at work on his typological Passover in the Holy Family, he wrote to William Allingham that Hunt was sending The Scapegoat to the Royal Academy: "a grand thing, but not for the public," and although one cannot be certain he understood the symbolic intentions of the work, his own concern with this kind of representation makes it seem most likely (Letter of April 1856, Letters, I, 300). While Hunt was still at work on the picture in the Middle East, Charles Collins expressed enthusiasm for the subject, showing he grasped its symbolism quite well: I was especially struck with the noble idea of the Scapegoat.

It is a glorious subject full of wild terror and (much more) one of the strongest and most unmistakable types of Him who bore our sins and was wounded for our transgressions and as that it becomes a theme of the utmost[?] and most touching interest and importance. I envy you the subject, only glad that it has got into better hands than mine. [ALS 7 February 1855; London (Huntington MS).] Since Collins himself had earlier employed types of Christ in Berengaria's Alarm , his comprehension is not surprising, and it adds to the evidence that Hunt was not quite as isolated in his use of such iconography as the memoirs made it appear. One must emphasize that not all the reviewers disliked the picture or found it hard to understand. The Illustrated London News considered The Scapegoat such an important painting that it several times praised it in the course of discussing other works. When writing about H. B.

Willis's A Family Group, which was exhibited at the National Institution in 1857, the reviewer for the Illustrated London News commented that goats, the subject of this painting, have been naturally associated with the Old Testament, for these same animals accompanied "the Patriarchs in their wanderings; forming one of the subjects of the most acceptable sacrifice, and being made a type and emblem of Him, who bare the sins of the guilty world. The Scapegoat has, however, been a work pictorially well treated by Mr. Hunt, in his remarkable work exhibited last year at the Royal Acad ('"A Family Group." Painted by H. B. Willis', Illustrated London News 16 May 1857, .395). The previous year when this periodical commented upon the Crystal Palace Picture Galleries, it had also singled out Hunt's picture as an example of Pre-Raphaelite excellence (19 July [1856], 73). Another bit of evidence suggesting that at least some members of the picture buying public comprehended Hunt's typological iconography appears in a letter of August 25, 1864 Hunt received from J. F.

Miller of Glasgow, offering to commission a painting of the commonplace type from Genesis 3 :15 of Christ" s ultimate conquest of Satan: "And I will put enmity between thee [the serpent] and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel" (Rylands Eng. MS. 1216). Contemporary notices of London art exhibitions show that while such use of prefigurative symbolism was not commonplace in Victorian painting, it was not entirely unknown either. The Art-Journal's review of the 1854 Royal Academy exhibition described a Holy Family by one A. Roberts, "suggested by passages in the second chapter of St. Luke ... the intention being to show the Saviour, while yet a youth, in the household of Joseph and Mary, with allusions to the Redemption" ('Royal Academy. The Exhibition, 1854," 16 (1854), 165). Since this was the only picture ever exhibited by Roberts at the Royal Academy or at any other London exhibition, it is difficult to know how far and consistently he developed such symbolism.

On the other hand, because his painting was not accompanied by a gloss in the official catalogue, the Art-Journal's identification of the scriptural source and prefigurative symbolism suggests such iconography was not completely obscure to the reviewer either. In 1856, the year Hunt exhibited The Scapegoat, William Cave Thomas, a painter of many scriptural subjects, sent The Heir Cast Out of the Vineyard to the Royal Academy, and this picture, like Hunt's, used typological symbolism. It was accompanied by a text from Matthew 21:38-9: "But when the husbandmen saw the son, they said among themselves, This is the heir, come let us kill him, and let us seize on his inheritance. And they caught him, and cast him out of the vineyard, and slew him." According to the Art-Journal "we see . . . the Saviour driven forth, followed by a crowd who scourge and insult him. The spirit of parable is sustained in an allusion to the crucifixion in the appearance of the cross in the tumultuous procession.

One remarkable figure, on the right, stoops to cut a thorn wherewith to beat Christ" (18 [1856], 173). This picture, which employed one of Christ's own parables as a type, makes a somewhat more complex use of this form of symbolism than W. C. T. Dobson's Bethlehem (1860). The Art-Journal describes the scene of Mary, Joseph, and the infant Christ: "a lamb lies bound on the floor — this is, of course, a type of the Saviour; and if this be a type, a man at the door dragging in a dog that advances unwillingly must also have a signification, but that is obscure" (22 [1860], 167). That the Art-Journal's writers found such symbolism comprehensible again appears in 1862 in one of its notices on "Art in the Continental States" which favorably comments on Flandrin's friezes in the Church of St. Germain des Prï¿½s, pointing out that the artist's "idea in these compositions . . .

seems to be the development of Christianity as recorded in the Bible and New Testament — the typical in the Bible, the realisation in the New Testament" (15). But perhaps the most interesting symbolic work noticed by this periodical is one whose symbolism it did not understand - Landseer's An Offering, which was exhibited at the 1861 British Institution. Ignorant of the painting's meaning, the reviewer commented that "The title is curt and unsatisfactory," adding that Landseer's picture "presents simply a goat bound and laid upon a pile, as if for a burnt offering, according to Leviticus IX:15, "And he took the goat, which was the sin offering for the people, and slew it, and offered it for sin, as the first." (69). Hunt had wanted the great animal painter to attempt the subject of The Scapegoat, but had finally painted it himself. It is not clear whether Landseer later took the painter's suggestion, consciously trying to outdo him at his own subject, or came independently to paint one of the most common types.

Landseer's gloss enforces his meaning with clarity, particularly if one takes the final phrase "as the first" (as many preachers did) to imply that a greater sacrifice would have to be made to save man. although the Art-Journal here failed to see Landseer's prefiguration of the sacrifice of Christ, it often did correctly interpret prefigurative symbolism, and its notices demonstrate that during the 1850s and "60s painters other than Hunt were employing types and figures of Christ in their works The iconographic problems we encounter in The Scapegoat, then, do not derive primarily from any obscurity, since a fairly large segment of Hunt's audience found such symbolism intelligible. With the assistance of scriptural texts and catalogue commentary, the audience could be expected to understand what Hunt intended. The iconographic difficulties arise not from the type employed, but from the way Hunt employed it. More than any of his other typological paintings, The Scapegoatis a mere static emblem, and one whose pictorial nature tends to struggle against the meaning the artist sought to impose upon it.

Of his pictures which use typological symbolism, only The Shadow of Death comes close to being as static as The Scapegoat, and Hunt achieved this effect of stasis by freezing a dramatic action — that of Christ's prayer at the end of a day's labor while his mother looks doubtfully at the gifts of the Magi. In The Scapegoat, on the other hand, one comes upon a mere goat, and it alone must bear all the painting's symbolism. Hunt did attempt to create the proper verbal context for his image, but all the drama (as well as all the symbolic details) exists in the language of the glosses, and the canvas contains none of them. His earlier works, such as The Awakening Conscience, make every possible detail function iconographically, and he carried this integration of realism and symbolism even further in The Finding of the Saviour in the Temple. In The Scapegoat the only possible contributory details are the fillet on the animal's head, which is simply one of its attributes, and the powerful representation of the Dead Sea and of the desert wasteland which surrounds it.

This provides the literal surroundings of the dying goat, intensifying its sufferings, but because these agonies are supposed to prefigure those of Christ, the landscape does not function as symbolically as the animal itself. Again, Hunt's naturalism has distracted us from his deeper meaning, rather than led us to it. Since one of the problems with this picture is that the iconography is chiefly limited to the goat itself, it is worthwhile noting that Hunt changed this symbolism from an earlier version. In his original oil study, now at Manchester, the painter juxtaposed the scapegoat, one type of Christ, to a rainbow, another type, another type of the Saviour and his mercies (For a detailed discussion of the iconography of the rainbow in Victorian painting, see Landow, 'The Rainbow: A Problematic Image', in Nature and the Victorian Imagination, ed. G. B. Tennyson and U. C. Knoepflmacher (Berkeley, 1977). We know that Hunt encountered a rainbow on his first sight of Osdoom, the Dead Sea setting of the picture (See letter quoted in Bennett, Hunt, .44).

His decision to use a white, rather than a black, animal for the final version of The Scapegoat may have been one reason he decided to abandon the rainbow. A more important reason had to have been that thus contrasted, the images do not function very coherently: whereas the rainbow in Millais's Blind Girl promises hope, salvation, and new vision to the young beggar, in Hunt's picture it seems to promise these to the goat. Because the point of the picture is to record the horrifying sufferings of Christ as they were prefigured in an Old Testament ritual, such an implication had to be removed. Even if we read the rainbow as a promise to the spectator, it still interferes with the basic iconography of the picture. In the final version of The Scapegoat where Hunt simplified his symbolism by removing the apparently confusing element of its iconography, he produced an atypical work, one which is not only static but which does not employ his characteristic counterpointing of symbolic detail.

William Holman Hunt - Alchetron, The Free Social Encyclopedia I Love to read n write about Interesting People William Holman Hunt Education Royal Academy of Arts Born 2 April 1827 (1827-04-02) Cheapside, London, England, United Kingdom Died September 7, 1910, Kensington, London, United Kingdom Period Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood Artwork The Light of the World, The Awakening Conscience, The Scapegoat, The Hireling Shepherd, The Shadow of Death Similar People Dante Gabriel Rossetti, John Everett Millais, Edward Burne‑Jones, Ford Madox Brown, Elizabeth Siddal William holman hunt painting works hd Sponsored Links William Holman Hunt OM (2 April 1827 – 7 September 1910) was an English painter and one of the founders of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. His paintings were notable for their great attention to detail, vivid color, and elaborate symbolism. These features were influenced by the writings of John Ruskin and Thomas Carlyle, according to whom the world itself should be read as a system of visual signs.

For Hunt it was the duty of the artist to reveal the correspondence between sign and fact. Of all the members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, Hunt remained most true to their ideals throughout his career. He was always keen to maximize the popular appeal and public visibility of his works. William holman hunt co founder preraphaelite brotherhood 1827 1910 Biography William Holman Hunt changed his middle name from "Hobman" to Holman when he discovered that a clerk had misspelled the name after his baptism at the church of Saint Mary the Virgin, Ewell. After eventually entering the Royal Academy art schools, having initially been rejected, Hunt rebelled against the influence of its founder Sir Joshua Reynolds. He formed the Pre-Raphaelite movement in 1848, after meeting the poet and artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Along with John Everett Millais they sought to revitalise art by emphasising the detailed observation of the natural world in a spirit of quasi-religious devotion to truth. This religious approach was influenced by the spiritual qualities of medieval art, in opposition to the alleged rationalism of the Renaissance embodied by Raphael. He had many pupils including Robert Braithwaite Martineau. Hunt married twice.

After a failed engagement to his model Annie Miller, he married Fanny Waugh, who later modelled for the figure of Isabella. When she died in childbirth in Italy he sculpted her tomb at Fiesole, having it brought down to the English Cemetery, beside the tomb of Elizabeth Barrett Browning. His second wife, Edith, was Fanny's sister. At this time it was illegal in Britain to marry one's deceased wife's sister, so Hunt was forced to travel abroad to marry her. This led to a serious breach with other family members, notably his former Pre-Raphaelite colleague Thomas Woolner, who had once been in love with Fanny and had married Alice, the third sister of Fanny and Edith. Hunt's works were not initially successful, and were widely attacked in the art press for their alleged clumsiness and ugliness. He achieved some early note for his intensely naturalistic scenes of modern rural and urban life, such as The Hireling Shepherd and The Awakening Conscience.

However, it was with his religious paintings that he became famous, initially The Light of the World (1851–1853), now in the chapel at Keble College, Oxford; a later version (1900) toured the world and now has its home in St Paul's Cathedral. In the mid-1850s Hunt travelled to the Holy Land in search of accurate topographical and ethnographical material for further religious works, and to “use my powers to make more tangible Jesus Christ’s history and teaching”; there he painted The Scapegoat, The Finding of the Saviour in the Temple and The Shadow of Death, along with many landscapes of the region. Hunt also painted many works based on poems, such as Isabella and The Lady of Shalott. He eventually built his own house in Jerusalem He eventually had to give up painting because failing eyesight meant that he could not get the level of quality that he wanted. His last major works, a large version of The Light of the World were completed with the help of his assistant Edward Robert Hughes.

Sponsored Links Hunt died on 7 September 1910 and was buried in St Paul's Cathedral Awards and commemoration Hunt published an autobiography in 1905. Many of his late writings are attempts to control the interpretation of his work. That year, he was appointed to the Order of Merit by King Edward VII. At the end of his life he lived in Sonning-on-Thames. His personal life was the subject of Diana Holman-Hunt's book My Grandfather, his Life and Loves. The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was depicted in two BBC period dramas. The first, The Love School, in 1975, starred Bernard Lloyd as Hunt. The second was Desperate Romantics, in which Hunt is played by Rafe Spall. Facing Mar Elias Monastery is a stone bench erected by the wife of the painter, who painted some of his major works at this spot. The bench is inscribed with biblical verses in Hebrew, Greek, Arabic and English.

Partial list of works A Converted British Family Sheltering a Christian Missionary from the Persecution of the Druids (1850) Valentine Rescuing Sylvia from Proteus (1851) The Awakening Conscience (1853) The Light of the World (1854) The Scapegoat (1856) The Finding of the Saviour in the Temple (1860) The Shadow of Death (1871) The Importunate Neighbour (1895) The Light of the World William Holman Hunt 28037 oil painting reproduction Visit European Gallery William Holman Hunt 1827-1910 British William Holman Hunt Galleries Hunt's intended middle name was "Hobman", which he disliked intensely.

He chose to call himself Holman when he discovered that his middle name had been misspelled this way after a clerical error at his baptism at the church of Saint Mary the Virgin, Ewell.[1] Though his surname is "Hunt", his fame in later life led to the inclusion of his middle name as part of his surname, in the hyphenated form "Holman-Hunt", by which his children were known. After eventually entering the Royal Academy art schools, having initially been rejected, Hunt rebelled against the influence of its founder Sir Joshua Reynolds. He formed the Pre-Raphaelite movement in 1848, after meeting the poet and artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Along with John Everett Millais they sought to revitalise art by emphasising the detailed observation of the natural world in a spirit of quasi-religious devotion to truth. This religious approach was influenced by the spiritual qualities of medieval art, in opposition to the alleged rationalism of the Renaissance embodied by Raphael. He had many pupils including Robert Braithwaite Martineau (best known for his work "Last Days in the Old Home") who was a moderately successful painter although he died young.

The Hireling Shepherd, 1851Hunt's works were not initially successful, and were widely attacked in the art press for their alleged clumsiness and ugliness. He achieved some early note for his intensely naturalistic scenes of modern rural and urban life, such as The Hireling Shepherd and The Awakening Conscience. However, it was with his religious paintings that he became famous, initially The Light of the World (now in the chapel at Keble College, Oxford, with a later copy in St Paul's Cathedral), having toured the world. After travelling to the Holy Land in search of accurate topographical and ethnographical material for further religious works, Hunt painted The Scapegoat, The Finding of the Saviour in the Temple and The Shadow of Death, along with many landscapes of the region. Hunt also painted many works based on poems, such as Isabella and The Lady of Shalott. All these paintings were notable for their great attention to detail, their hard vivid colour and their elaborate symbolism. These features were influenced by the writings of John Ruskin and Thomas Carlyle, according to whom the world itself should be read as a system of visual signs.

For Hunt it was the duty of the artist to reveal the correspondence between sign and fact. Out of all the members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood Hunt remained most true to their ideals throughout his career. He eventually had to give up painting because failing eyesight meant that he could not get the level of quality that he wanted. His last major work, The Lady of Shalott, was completed with the help of an assistant (Edward Robert Hughes). Hunt married twice. After a failed engagement to his model Annie Miller, he married Fanny Waugh, who later modelled for the figure of Isabella. When she died in childbirth in Italy he sculpted her tomb up at Fiesole, having it brought down to the English Cemetery, beside the tomb of Elizabeth Barrett Browning. His second wife, Edith, was Fanny's sister. At this time it was illegal in Britain to marry one's deceased wife's sister, so Hunt was forced to travel abroad to marry her. This led to a serious breach with other family members, notably his former Pre-Raphaelite colleague Thomas Woolner, who had married Fanny and Edith's third sister Alice.

Hunt's autobiography Pre-Raphaelitism and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (1905) was written to correct other literature about the origins of the Brotherhood, which in his view did not adequately recognise his own contribution. Many of his late writings are attempts to control the interpretation of his work. In 1905, he was appointed to the Order of Merit by King Edward VII. At the end of his life he lived in Sonning-on-Thames. The Light of the World 1851-3 Oil on canvas 125.5 x 59.8 cm (49 1/2 x 231/2 in) Keble College,Oxford (mk63) Related Paintings::.

Question: Who painted 'The Scapegoat', 'The Hireling Shepherd' and "The Light of the World?
Answer: William Holman Hunt